In this chapter, I discuss the main
anthropological issue and provide a brief structure for how the issue will be
examined. Next, I will introduce this project and the research questions that
drove this project. I will proceed to give details about the specific case that
was studied as a part of this research and that will include some of the
background of the area, the demographics, and the history of the conflicts in
the community. In addition, I will discuss the theoretical positions that are
important to the understanding of this research. From there, I will discuss the
gap in the scholarly literature this project will address and then summarize
the remaining chapters in this thesis.

Concerns of environmental
injustice are inherently social issues yet are embedded in scientific
assessments and these two facets are often not aligned. How that scientific,
quantitative data is collected, communicated and understood in a governmentally
generated risk assessment is often done ignoring the cultural context in which
that knowledge has been obtained and is distributed while also neglecting the
experiences of those impacted by the hazard (Lejano and Stokols 2010:108).
Considering this inherent conflict of perspectives, this project addressed the
anthropological issue of how stakeholders - including scientists, politicians,
and residents - construct environmental health risk messages. Scientists
included those that identified as environmental scientists in academia, public
health, or consultants. Politicians are those elected to public office or are
non-scientists that work for a governmental agency. Residents are those
participants that reside in South Brooksville.